


with all the ways you've seen me lately

by acidquill



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post Hale Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 02:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidquill/pseuds/acidquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She asks him once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with all the ways you've seen me lately

**Author's Note:**

> pre-series Hale feels. originally written Nov 15 2012.

She asks him once.  
  
“Who set the fire, Derek?”  
  
He trembles and whines. Bares his throat, trying to appease her.  
  
The two of them have circled around this for months. Laura’s bitten back the question more times than she wants to count. Worried it between her teeth like a bone. There’s always been a reason she shouldn’t, couldn’t. Won’t. Even though as the alpha, she has every right to drag the answer from him, willing or not.   
  
Laura wants to know as a sister. She needs Derek to tell her who did this to him, to them, because he’s her little brother, and all she’s ever wanted is to keep him safe. Even if it’s from himself.  
  
She’s ignored the way he refuses to visit Uncle Peter. Ignored the nights when he wakes her up howling, begging ‘no, stop, _please_ ,’ with the night air between them soaked in the salt-smell of tears he’s not awake enough to hide. Laura thought, she believed Derek would tell her, once the grief let him breathe. Who could have so much power. How they got it in the first place. Instead he pulls farther away day by day, moon by moon.  
  
Their family is _gone_. She’s afraid she’s going to lose him too.  
  
So Laura keeps pressing, holds onto him when his eyes go white around the edges. She doesn’t feel like an all-powerful alpha when she looks down at her hands, circled around Derek’s wrists; they seem inadequate for the job of protecting what’s left of her family. Keeping things together. But she has to do this, there’s no one left to be the ‘grownup.’ That’s her responsibility now.  
  
She’s let both of them run for too long.  
  
“You know who did it,” she holds his arm. Smells the fear roll off him in waves. He shakes under her fingers.  
  
“You can tell me, Derek.”  
  
She isn’t expecting the snap, the lunge. The skin of her shoulder gives under his teeth, copper tang of blood in her nose. She’s standing between him and the door. Derek takes off before Laura can react. She catches a glimpse of his terrified eyes and bloody mouth before he disappears.  
  
He doesn’t come home. Laura doesn’t sleep.  
  
She finds him a week later, dirty and starving. He won’t meet her eyes. At least he allows her to lead him back to the car. Wrap him in a blanket and buckle the seatbelt around him as if he was seven instead of seventeen.   
  
She pulls into a diner on the way back to the apartment. Picks up all the cheeseburgers two twenties will buy, an extra large vanilla shake because her little brother is a purist when it comes to ice cream - and she needs to apologize. Knows words aren’t much good to either of them.  
  
In the car, Laura watches Derek tear into the food. Can’t help noticing the way he’s drawn into himself. Shoulders hunched, tight lines of mistrust and misery.  
  
For the first time in her life, Laura feels like a monster.  
  
He startles when she grabs him, pulls him down to eye level. She presses their foreheads together. Whuffs like their mother did when they were small and scared. And that’s _it_ \- Derek relaxes against her. He whines low, drops his head to her shoulder; it’s the same one he mauled, and Laura knows that isn’t a mistake. Whispers ‘ _The fire. It’s my fault._ ’ into the safety of her neck.   
  
Laura runs her hand through his hair. She breathes deep, the scent of grease and dirt and pain masking the comforting brother-cub-pack smell she’s known as well as her own since the first time her parents held her up over Derek’s bassinet.  
  
“No kid, it’s not.”  
  
Maybe one day she’ll learn his secret. Derek’ll be strong, or brave, or healed enough to tell her, and she’ll be able to listen because she will be too. But if she goes to her grave without an answer, she won’t regret choosing her brother over a name.   
  
She never asks him again.


End file.
